Let us just legalize everything that mankind, or small pockets of people, want
and be done with it. Would that make everyone still about to function happy?
The line of "everyone is doing it" doesn't make it right, not even close.

It's not a question of legalizing everything, it's a matter of admitting our limitations. American prisons are overcrowded, huge sums are spent trying to battle the cartels, the efforts to aid the drug wars south of the border have resulted in bloody wars, and yet the drugs continue to make their way into the country and the demand climbs. We're simply fighting a losing battle, just like prohibition.

Meaning that, at some point, we (who have "social contracts" in the first place because the abstraction of 'absolute freedom' becomes merely 'might-makes-right' in the real world) have to make some decisions on where the line of criminality should be drawn. Inconvenience of enforcement seems to me a poor excuse to erase the line.

Jake10 said: "We're simply fighting a losing battle, just like prohibition." And I hear this, I really do. It must be frustrating to law enforcement to see victories so seemingly few and far between. It's just that there are those battles which are lost only by giving up.
The demand for sex traffic and child pornography hasn't gone away either...

Legalize cocaine and heroin? We want to actively participate in the destruction of people's lives now?

What is wrong witn cocaine, coca - cola and hamburger can do more damage to the body than cocaine, that said, "real" cocaine.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tuthmosis III

@ Lucius Vorenus: I'm agreeing with tjadams ().

Jake10 said: "We're simply fighting a losing battle, just like prohibition." And I hear this, I really do. It must be frustrating to law enforcement to see victories so seemingly few and far between. It's just that there are those battles which are lost only by giving up.
The demand for sex traffic and child pornography hasn't gone away either...

I just meant for example I haven't tasted many drugs until I was 21, and I was fully able to determine what is good and what is bad for me. But that's only my opinion. Yes, I used marijuana and light drugs from time to time when I was younger, and still managed to be one of the best students at the University, train boxing very successfully and even now I'm sure I can run for 8 - 10 km's without problems. I tasted some drugs later, and i hadn't had problems with it at the parties for example. Prejudices are what makes our era disgusting, usage of drugs should be free choice as well as prostitution.

What determines which drug should be legal must take into account more than just the health effects.

We must determine the effects it has on the entire society - and so there are some heavy drugs - like alcohol - which can not be prohibited.

My thought is not that we should legalize softer drugs - marijuana, mushrooms, LSD, see what the ramifications are, see if the amount of hard drug users can be made so small that their existence does very little harm, and if so, then to keep hard drugs prohibited for the most part except in cases where it is appropriate and healthier to not prohibit them.

Until soft drugs are legalized and we can say that hard drug users still will not switch over in significant numbers, then I cannot see the reason why hard drugs must be legal.

My approach is to legalize soft drugs, see the results, then possibly transition to not prohibiting other harder drugs, but hopefully to keep harder drugs prohibited.

This article is an overview of drug policies of different countries. In general, decriminalization clearly decreases the use of heavy drugs, but I have no definite view on opiates. It is a complicated issue. General feeling is that destroying the black market would help, and decriminalization would allow people to ask for help earlier, but it is too easy to die from opiate overdose so opiates remains an open question for me. As to the rest of them... in my view, they are neither better nor worse than alcohol, so legalization will not bring more harm than we already have.